Photo & Video Galleries

Drammen University Tower

Part 1 Project 2015Jonathan VarnesOslo School of Architecture and Design, NorwayThe project seeks to explore the idea of a university campus as a critical institution and as a model for socioeconomic sustainability in a small city, within one single building. The high-rise is intended as a central piece in the further development of the city of Drammen, a small city in eastern Norway, generating and critically commentating its future.

Drammen, a former industry city 30 minutes from Oslo, has a population comparable to university cities as Oxford and Cambridge. Whereas these cities always have had the university as their subsistence and where this institution is omnipresent in the urban fabric, this high-rise university project would rather be an independent island in the archipelago that constitute Drammen. Being a public and welfare institution, the university forces new premises in a typology normally associated with commercialism.

The composition of programs within the university institution has a potential that a high-rise building can organize in new ways. Typologically, floors range from closed, atrium types to free plans, and one entire level (46 x 46 meters) has the possibility of being one continuous room. This variation is intended to represent the spectrum between chaos and doctrine in education, from formal ceremonies to informal meetings.